letters from postville

The President
The White House
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

My name is Pedro Arturo Lopez Vega, I am the son of Consuelo Vega Nava, one of the workers that were caught in the May 12, 2008 Postville Raid at Agriprocessors, Inc. She was sentenced to five months in jail and then deported to Mexico on October 25th, 2008. She did not talk about me and my little sister because she was afraid that they would send us to jail with her. I don’t want anybody to suffer the way I did because it is very painful when they take away the one person you can always trust and count on.

The raid has affected me and my family in many ways. My nine year old sister Samantha would go into her room and “talk” to my mom while she was actually not there. My nephew who was eight months at the time, would always crawl to the front door and wait for my mom and after she would not show up, he would start to cry. As for me, instead of my mom waking me up, giving me a kiss, and sending me to school, my older sister Juanita has to do it. When I come back from school I don’t receive the warm hug that my mom used to give me and when I go to sleep I miss her goodnight kiss and her blessing for the night.

When we had mock elections in school I voted for you because I knew you were the change that this country and immigration population needs.

In school I read about a soldier in the Civil War who had to stand guard two nights in a row. On the second night he fell asleep and was sentenced to death for not doing his duty. Abraham Lincoln pardoned him and when the soldier offered to pay him with his savings Abraham Lincoln refused and told him to just do his duty.

Mr. President, I want to ask you to be like Abraham Lincoln and pardon my mother for three days so she can come to Postville on May 29, 2009 and see my graduation from 8th grade and allow me to show her that I kept my promise.

I cannot repay you with money but I assure you that I will always do my best and help people in need.

Respectfully yours,



Pedro Arturo Lopez Vega
332 North Reynolds Street
Postville, Iowa 52162


_____________________________________________________________________________________


Mrs. Michelle Obama
The White House
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mrs. Obama,

My name is Pedro Arturo Lopez Vega, I am the son of Consuelo Vega Nava, one of the workers that were caught in the May 12, 2008 Postville Raid at Agriprocessors, Inc. She was sentenced to five months in jail and then deported to Mexico on October 25th, 2008. She did not talk about me and my little sister because she was afraid that they would send us to jail with her. I don’t want anybody to suffer the way I did because it is very painful when they take away the one person you can always trust and count on.

It has been almost a year since I last saw my mom. I know that as a mother, you can imagine how my mother must have felt spending days and nights without knowing anything about her children or her husband.

The raid has affected me and my family in many ways. My nine year old sister Samantha would go into her room and “talk” to my mom while she was actually not there. My nephew who was eight months at the time, would always crawl to the front door and wait for my mom and after she would not show up, he would start to cry. As for me, instead of my mom waking me up, giving me a kiss, and sending me to school, my older sister Juanita has to do it. When I come back from school I don’t receive the warm hug that my mom used to give me and when I go to sleep I miss her goodnight kiss and her blessing for the night.

I don’t wake up with the same desire to go to school as I used to but I get up, go to school, and do my homework because I promised my mom that I would get an education and try to be successful in life.

I would very much appreciate it if you could ask your husband to give my mother a three day visa, so she can come to Postville and see my graduation from 8th grade on May 29, 2009 and allow me to show her that I kept my promise.

Respectfully yours,


Pedro Arturo Lopez Vega
332 North Reynolds Street
Postville, Iowa 52162

Postville redux

The below quote is from a blog by the elected leadership of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), meant to help focus the national debate on the real facts about immigration and the means to achieve a just and rational system. AILA is the national association of immigration lawyers established to promote justice, advocate for fair and reasonable immigration laws, advance the quality of immigration law and practice, and enhance the professional development of its members. The blog entry is titled Postville, One Year Later:

To the government, Postville was a cold clinical experiment. For the first time it sought to criminalize immigrants on a mass scale. In Postville, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa, using the federal identity theft statute as a hammer, forged serious crimes out of mere civil immigration violations. No longer would it be enough to simply arrest and deport undocumented immigrants. They had to send them home as felons.

Postville again

Here's a rare bird indeed: a unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court that workers who use fake id numbers must know that they belong to a real person in order to be guilty of "aggravated identity theft."

The most sweeping use of the statute was in Iowa, after an immigration raid in May 2008 at a meatpacking plant in Postville. Nearly 300 unauthorized immigrant workers from the plant, most of them from Guatemala, pleaded guilty to document-fraud charges rather than risk being convicted at trial of the identity-theft charge. In most of those cases, the prosecutors demonstrated only that the Social Security numbers and immigration documents the workers had presented were false.

Many of the immigrants served five-month prison sentences and then faced summary deportation. The Postville cases raised an outcry among immigrant advocates, because they transformed into federal felonies a common practice by illegal immigrants of presenting fake Social Security numbers and other documents to employers.

The court’s ruling is unlikely to aid the immigrants in the Postville cases. Most of them have long since been deported.

Perspectives differ on the efficacy of raids to discourage undocumented workers

So that you know: this story is posted by Associated Press and since they've been suing folks who quote their stories, or show any of their pictures, without payment (I plan to attribute them, not pay them), if this blog suddenly ceases, it may be that the mighty AP has descended: 2 Iowa towns, 2 views on immigration raids

POSTVILLE, Iowa - For immigrant advocates, the raid on a meatpacking plant in Postville last May was evidence of all that is wrong with large-scale arrests of illegal workers.

Families were hurt, and empty shops and lines at the food bank show that the town was, too. One rental agency says nearly 70 percent of its properties are vacant. The City Council even sought a federal disaster designation because of the lingering effects of the raid on the Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse.

"At what point do we acknowledge that the system is so broken that we're no longer willing to participate?" wondered Maryn Olson, a coordinator with Postville Response Coalition, a group established after the raid.

But as the Obama administration considers a new policy on immigration raids, another Iowa town less than 100 miles away has emerged from a raid on its largest employer with a different perspective.

Read more. . .

Postville

From the home page for the city of Postville, Iowa:

The City of Postville is a diverse community rich in industry and culture. As we look towards future goals and visions, we strive to make Postville the best town it can possibly be for the residents and business community who live and work here, but also for future generations and businesses.

Our mission, for the City of Postville is to maintain and improve the quality of life for all citizens in our community and to provide superior services and public facilities for the community.

The City of Postville is committed to meeting and improving the needs of the community by providing for essential services such as law enforcement, public utilities, streets, parks and recreation for today and for the future.

We strive to make Postville a "Hometown to the World" where people of all walks of life can call Postville home.

Sounds like a good place to live.

a year without a Guatamalan? might be more appropriate

We're approaching an anniversary that we need to discuss and we will do that here. Mother Jones has a good story about a year without a Mexican but that may be too narrow.

It all began with the whir and flicker of helicopters on May 12, 2008, an incongruous sound in a tiny Iowa town tucked amid cornfields. All over Postville, people craned their necks from orderly lawns, phones rang, and gossip flew. Reverend Stephen Brackett, the town's Lutheran pastor, was on his day off and didn't hear the helicopters at first, but when his church secretary called to tell him something unusual was happening, he at once suspected what it was. For years, there were rumors that the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant at the edge of town was under scrutiny by immigration authorities. Later that morning, Brackett's wife called with confirmation: She'd spotted two helicopters and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in jackets and flak vests down by the slaughterhouse.

What happened in Postville is larger than that. We'll be discussing it between now and the May 12, 2009 one-year anniversary.

Postville, Iowa and undocumented workers